Hold on a minute: Fans convinced Mayweather KNOCKED OUT Logan Paul but propped him up to keep fight going in labored boxing farce

Did Floyd Mayweather decide not to beat Logan Paul? Fans who share Paul's suspicions that Mayweather went easy on him have spotted a clip that appears to show the boxer holding his foe up as he slumps forward after taking a shot.

Arguably the greatest boxer of his generation, Mayweather failed to win for the first time in the ring and gave game Paul the distinction of avoiding the fate suffered by the former champion's 50 opponents during his exceptional professional career.

In a mismatch described as a 'clinch fest' by many observers, Mayweather landed fewer than four shots on the rookie in four of the eight rounds, only reaching the ten mark in round five – a stark contrast to his titanic clash with fellow great Manny Pacquiao in 2015, when he threw dozens of punches in each of the 12 rounds and had a success rate in double figures for eight of them.

One infliction that 26-year-old YouTuber Paul did share with Mayweather's lengthy list of previous victims was an inability to connect with his shots, yet the veteran clearly seemed reluctant to unleash the feared finishing skills with which he has brutally dispatched some of the best challengers from around the world over the years.

Just when fans familiar with Mayweather's tactical mastery had expected him to catch the tiring Paul with a classic sucker punch, the showboater seemed content to go through the motions and wait for the final bell in a contest that required a knockout within the allotted time to provide a definitive result.

"Who could have seen this coming?" asked one hugely-followed account, highlighting footage of Paul looking heavy-footed as he took a clean right hook from Mayweather after clumsily attempting a misguided attack of his own.

That might have been all the invitation Mayweather would have needed to end the show early on some of the greatest nights of his long unbeaten run. Instead, he seemed to physically prevent Paul from hitting the canvas, keeping the much larger man up with his arms when it seemed to be easier to let him touch down.

"Mayweather knocked out Logan Paul in this moment of the fight but chose to hold Logan up instead of allowing Logan to fall," added the account, echoing Paul's wry post-fight admission that he may have been let off the hook.

Mayweather sportingly claimed that Paul knew how to "tie him up" afterwards, although it is hard to imagine that he would have struggled to stop the social media sensation who came into the fight with a record of one defeat from one professional fight.

There are many understandable reasons why Mayweather could have wanted to prolong the spectacle, not least the memory of his whirlwind win over Japanese kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa when he last returned from retirement, when he bullied his hopelessly outclassed adversary with virtually the first shot of the bout, offering his audience precious little sporting intrigue in return for a hefty payday.

A huge crowd of more than 60,000 is thought to have watched him fight Paul in Miami, and the prospect of similarly lucrative 'celebrity' events could have been badly damaged had the younger man been blown away.

Many viewers suggested the outcome had been pre-arranged, mocked arguments that Paul was worthy of taking on a sporting icon and joked that the feuding pair had put their differences aside in favour of repeatedly hugging each other in place of a slugfest.

Paul's preposterous proposal that he would fare better in a rematch perhaps betrayed why the bout lasted as long as it did.

"You never know with this guy," he said when asked whether Mayweather had been at his menacing full throttle.

"I'm going to go home thinking, 'did Floyd let me survive?' Let me get a little better – maybe I can end it next time."

Whatever the truth, both will make tens of millions of dollars from gate and pay-per-view revenue after an occasion that Mayweather gleefully described as a "legalized bank robbery".